How to prevent migraines: 3 ways to stop headaches before they start

If you’ve ever experienced a migraine headache, you know how debilitating it can be. The throbbing, focused pain in the head—often accompanied by a sensitivity to light and sound and sometimes even dizziness and nausea—makes it nearly impossible to function. If you’re looking for ways to prevent a migraine, you’re in the right place.

3 tips to prevent migraines

When it comes to migraines, I know all my patients and the nearly 40 million Americans who live with these extreme headaches would agree with Benjamin Franklin’s old maxim, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

While the frequency, severity and accompanying symptoms may differ from person to person, there are steps you can take to help prevent the onset of a migraine or reduce the length and impact of an episode. 

Here are three key pieces of advice I share with my patients to help them prevent a migraine.

1. Know your personal triggers

For most people, normal headaches will come and go from time to time seemingly without a reason. For those who have migraines, however, there is often a recurring cause (or causes) that triggers it. Lifestyle factors are chief among them.

Common triggers of migraine attacks include:

• Sleep deprivation
• Hunger or not eating regularly
• Fatiga
• Lack of physical activity
• Stress
• Illness
• Menstrual cycles
• Certain foods and drinks
• Alcohol

These have all been shown to trigger migraines, so it’s critical to figure out your personal triggers and do what you can to avoid them. Some potential triggers, like a shift in the weather or barometric pressure, are harder to control.

However, it should be noted that outside of some climate-related changes, environmental factors have not been shown to be strong triggers of migraines. That’s why many headache specialists do not routinely recommend allergy testing during a migraine workup on new patients.

2. Keep track of your migraines

Since avoiding triggers is so crucial for those dealing with migraines, my top recommendation is always to keep a headache diary. This is essential to helping you track how many migraines you are actually having. Many people don’t realize how many headaches they are truly having until they start journaling.

As part of this exercise, make note of the circumstances surrounding each episode, including the day and time of day, what you’re doing when it starts, anything you’ve eaten, any stressors, length of headache and accompanying symptoms.

It’s helpful to see if you tend to get them when, for example, you’re more stressed or on the days your sleep has been poor, and how they track with menstrual cycles and diet.

The next step is to see if there's anything in your lifestyle that you can modify.

3. Control your triggers

Controlling triggers is mostly about trying to maintain a stable lifestyle and limit big changes. It’s important for those susceptible to migraines to minimize deviations to their routine. Here are a few key steps:

• Get adequate sleep and keep a regular sleep schedule (even on the weekends).
• Eat regular meals.
• Engage in routine cardiovascular activity.
• Manage stress with healthy coping mechanisms.

Managing stress is often the most difficult due to our fast-paced culture and busy lifestyles. However, learning to take time out to relax—both at work and at home—through quiet time, yoga, prayer or meditation can not only be crucial to avoiding a migraine but also help improve your overall wellbeing.

What about occasional migraines?

There are people who may experience only the occasional migraine, going months or even a year between episodes. If that’s you, you may not be aware of your triggers or track your episodes, so it’s hard to know how to prevent these migraines.

Should you feel a migraine bubbling up, I recommend starting with 600-800 mg of ibuprofen or 440 mg of naproxen, both of which are over-the-counter medications. Additionally, it’s important to stay hydrated and to try to eat a small snack if you've gone awhile without eating.

Get headache relief today

Anyone who experiences migraines should seek care from a headache specialist. This is especially true for people who’ve noticed that the frequency of their migraines is increasing.

When going to a specialist, it’s important to be able to share how often you are getting migraines (another reason to keep a diary), any other symptoms you experience with migraines and what treatments you’ve tried thus far.

Today, there are more options than ever to lessen the frequency and severity of migraines. For instance, there’s a new class of medications called anti-CGRP drugs that can be used for both the prevention and treatment of migraines, as well as non-medication therapies that a specialist can recommend.

You don’t have to live with the pain of migraines. Connect with the Baylor Scott & White Headache Program today for a personalized headache relief plan.